From Transmission to Tradition: Noisy Hegemonies in Vietnamese Music History

Wednesday, September 10, 2025, 3:00 – 4:30 PM, Tokioka Room, Moore Hall 319

The Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the Ethnomusicology Program at UH Mānoa are pleased to host a talk by Professor Alexander M. Cannon (Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Birmingham, UK).

Synopsis:

Tradition is enriching, perplexing, beautiful, and uncomfortable. In many ways, it is like water. Tradition sustains life but also carries hidden dangers. Tradition has existed for as long as one can remember but also constantly changes. Unlike water, however, tradition is a construction of human interaction. It arose to serve a particular purpose of human being-in-the-world and has proved profoundly durable-largely for the ways it connects people, ideas, and nature. In this presentation, Professor Cannon explores the history of tradition’s emergence in the twentieth century in the Vietnamese speaking world and its symbiotic relationship with forms of music. As part of a larger work on the “noisy hegemonies” of tradition, Professor Cannon links ways of thinking about tradition to the practice of traditional music and shows how resilient and hegemonic tradition has become.

Speaker Bio

Professor Alexander M. Cannon is a British American ethnomusicologist and Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Birmingham. He is Principal Investigator of the ERC- and UKRI-funded project SoundDecisions, which investigates the relationship between music and economic decision-making among Vietnamese and Khmer Krom populations of southern Vietnam. His book Seeding the Tradition: Musical Creativity in Southern Vietnam (Wesleyan University Press, 2022) won the 2023 Royal Musical Association / Cambridge University Press Outstanding Monograph Book Prize. His scholarship has appeared in Asian Music, Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies.